One of Irving’s founding families remains in original 1929 farmhouse

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Staff photo by GLORIA HERNANDEZ/neighborsgo

Phillip Story stands in the same spot his grandfather W.C. Story and grandmother Fannie Farine stand in a photo. The Story family settled and owned more than 300 acres south of Airport Freeway, in what is now the Irving Hospital District. Phillip is the only descendant of the first settler Jonathan Story still living in the city; in his family's 1930 farm house. Read the story on Page 20.

Jan Bemis knows how important the Story family is to the heritage of her south Irving neighborhood.

When residents began opposing the Story family’s zoning case to add a garage and workshop to the back of their Irving Hospital District property, Bemis mounted a front.

She took the podium at the Sept. 5 Irving City Council meeting as Irving Hospital District Association’s president to plead for approval of a garage and workshop addition to the 1929 Story farmhouse. She knew her neighborhood risked losing the Story family if the zoning case weren’t approved.

Phillip Story, a direct descendant of the Story family who settled in the area south of Airport Freeway between MacArthur Boulevard and O’Connor Road, raised his three children and still lives with his wife, Kelly, in his grandfather W.C. Story’s 1929 farm home on West Grauwyler Road.

“This home has sentimental value for us,” said Phillip, who has lived there with his family for 30 years.

The city council unanimously approved the Story zoning case.

Story grew up in the wooded area watching the 450 homes in the neighborhood be built within the trees that were his family’s livelihood. When his father, Raymond Story, died at 89 two years ago, he left behind years of history in more than 100-year-old tools that were used to farm the land.

“A lot of misinformation was swirling the neighborhood about [Phillip and Kelly] building an auto shop garage, and it wasn’t true,” Bemis said. “We mounted a front and got the word out about what the Storys really wanted to do.”

The Storys’ plans are to build a garage and workshop to store tools, like a more than 100-year-old anvil, from his father’s house across the street.

“[The Story family] hope to be able to stay on this property, keep it in the family and improve our neighborhood,” Bemis told the council. “I think it would do nothing but enhance our neighborhood and the view you see going down Grauwyler [Road].”

Neighbor Dianne Cartwright, an Irving Hospital District real estate agent, also spoke on the importance of the family’s ties to the area.

“The descendants of this historic family have chosen to stay on the Story homestead and restore and improve this historic property,” Cartwright said.

Cartwright said the property is an asset to the city, as is the Storys’ history in the aging neighborhood of brick homes built within an oak tree forest.

Irving’s Hospital District has held its value in south Irving for decades, but it’s losing many of its original homeowners as it ages.

“A lot of the original owners were doctors, because of the hospital, and as the community continues to age, residents are moving into nursing homes or passing away,” said Bemis. “And homes are empty and going up for sale.”

The Story family — named for Story Road, which runs from West Hunter Farrell Road in the south to North Belt Line Road in north Irving — settled more than 300 acres from what is now State Highway 114 to south of West Grauwyler Road. W.C. Story sold Ben Carpenter a slice of north Irving near State Highway 114 in what is modern-day Las Colinas.

And, little by little, the family’s acreage began to dwindle as the rural farming town of Irving grew.

Now, Phillip Story owns an acre and a half in the Irving Hospital District. His three children live in other North Texas cities, and his siblings live in Dallas and Seattle.

The family’s rich history in Irving began when Jonathan Story fled Illinois during the Civil War. He came to Irving in 1855 and began buying up land acre by acre.

“He was captured and fought with the Confederates against his own family who were from Illinois,” Story said.

After the war, Jonathan and his brother, Isaac, returned to Irving. One of Jonathan’s sons was Phillip Story’s grandfather, W.C. W.C.’s son was Raymond — Phillip’s father.

“I remember my father [Raymond] telling me that when my grandfather decided to build the farmhouse, the family moved into the barn,” Phillip said.

Phillip grew up across the street from his grandparent’s farmhouse in a home that Raymond built in 1958. His grandfather chose to settle in the area around 1897 because of its forest, which the family lived off. W.C. crossed the Trinity River in horse and buggy to sell his lumber to the “rich people on Swiss Avenue in Dallas,” Phillip said.

“My aunts and uncles lived all up and down the area,” he said. “I always felt like I was playing in a forest growing up.”

But two years before Phillip was born, his grandmother, Fannie Farine Story, widow of W.C., began selling the land to developers. In 1959, she sold a potion of the homestead to Glen Brook Valley Corporation for $177,660 — about the price of a 2,500-square-foot home in the area today. The developer named the area Story Glen Estates in memory of W.C. Story.

The development known as the Irving Hospital District began taking shape as Phillip grew up.

Phillip said his attachment to his family’s history is what keeps him in the area.

“We’ve raised our three kids in my grandfather’s home, and there’s just so much history here,” he said, as he glanced through his father’s files of books and papers on the family’s history. “We really looked at moving to other homes in Dallas, but I just couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.”

Neighborsgo Irving/Coppell editor Gloria Hernandez can be reached at 214-977-8027.

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